Just for a moment she thought of telling her the truth and asking her advice, but she saw how frail her mother looked and knew that any more anxiety, any more worry, might prove disastrous.

It was enough for her to lie awake night after night crying helplessly for her husband, without adding yet another problem to the ones they were already beset with.

Any further aggravation might be enough to prove fatal.

Thalia made up her mind.

“Actually, Mama, I have had a secret for a long time,” she said, “but now I am going to tell you what I have been keeping from you.”

“Keeping from me?” Lady Caversham repeated.

“I hope it will make you feel proud of me,” Thalia said. “I have written a book!”

“Written a book!” Lady Caversham replied in sheer astonishment.

“Only a very small one,” Thalia said. “I was going to wait until your birthday on Friday and give it to you as a present, but as I cannot bottle it up any longer, you must have it now. Wait, Mama, while I fetch it.”

Thalia rose, as she spoke, to cross the passage from her mother’s room to her own.

The author’s copies of her book, which she had collected yesterday from Hatchards after she had been with Mademoiselle Genevieve were in a little pile on her dressing table.

One had already been wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a bow of pink ribbon.

She had intended to give it, with a number of other small presents, to her mother on her birthday, but she knew now that she must at all costs divert her attention from the Earl’s intrusion and she could think of no better way to do so.

She carried the wrapped book back to the bedroom and put it into her mother’s hands.

“There you are, Mama,” she said, “your daughter’s debut into the literary world, and I am praying, as you must, that it will be a success and make us a lot of money.”

“I cannot believe it!” Lady Caversham exclaimed.

She undid the ribbon with fingers that trembled and pulled the book out of its wrapping.

“Gentlemen by a Person of Quality,” she read aloud. “Thalia what have you written?”

“It was a book I saw in the library at home that made me think of it,” Thalia replied. “It was in French and it was called simply, Les Femmes. It was a book of sayings that a Frenchman had collected about women all through the ages.”

“I think I remember it,” Lady Caversham said.

“I showed it to Papa. He laughed and said that he could add a great deal to it if he chose and perhaps one day he would write a book about all the women he had known, none of whom were as beautiful as you, Mama.”

“Darling Denzil, did he really say that?” she asked.